Turn 10 of 17

Tou haven't learnt and whisper in your new vouce more excuses and compliments. Anything to change. However your vocabulary changes and you dont even notice, simple and laden with filler words. Speaking of filler you suddenly feel phantom needles pierce your face. Mia starts to have a small smile as she watches your face lose any of its natural charm

"Mia, you know I love you, right?" you whisper, leaning toward her in the mirror, lashes fluttering.

"Like, you're literally the only one who matters. Those girls were, um — they were whatever. Like, literally nothing, okay? You're so pretty and smart and — and I'm, like, so sorry, baby, just — please?" The little voice pours it out sweet and breathy, and you don't hear what's happening to it. The words coming out are simple now, round little sentences padded with like and literally and okay, the vocabulary of the man who quoted books at dinner parties already gone soft in your mouth, and you don't even notice, because it feels completely natural to talk this way.

Then the needles come.

Phantom pinpricks scatter across your face — cheeks, lips, the hollows under your eyes, your forehead — tiny precise stings, one after another, like an invisible hand is working a syringe along the planes of your face. You gasp and grab the sink with both manicured hands, watching in horror as the sting travels, plumping, lifting, filling.

Your cheekbones rise higher, rounder, taut with youthful fullness that no twenty-four-year-old face earns honestly. The subtle hollow under each cheek fills smooth. Your lips swell a shade past plush into pillowy, the cupid's bow sharpening. Even your forehead smooths, brows lifting into a gently surprised arch that will never fully relax. Every last line, every natural asymmetry, every trace of the face you were born with is injected away, and what's left is flawless, symmetrical, and utterly charmless — the overfilled look you used to point out across bars and laugh about.

Mia is smiling. It's small, and it's the first real smile she's worn all night, and it's terrifying.

"There it is," she says softly. "That face. The one that talked its way into every room it wanted. Except now, sweetheart, it can only pout."